


A Kiss (Not) Goodbye

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Flirting, Jack is a Tease, Kissing, M/M, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Doctor leaves Jack in Cardiff and his team seems to have things well in hand without him, Jack uses the Vortex Manipulator to mope in a space bar. But things usually get weirder than that where he's involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kiss (Not) Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monkiainen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkiainen/gifts).



Like with so many other stories, it all starts in a pub. Or actually like all _his_ stories it starts in Cardiff.

Because today is just one of those days and Jack has taken the coward's way out of Cardiff after he realized that all his little Torchwood children have grown up in his “absence” and he is for once not actually needed. They have the weirdness well in hand. And that after he has just given up the chance of a lifetime to go back to his responsibility and his team. The invitation of the Doctor to tag along again is still ringing in his ears and although he still thinks that not going with him has been the right decision, his treacherous mind can’t stop taunting him with coming up with enticing answers for the unasked question of “what if?”

He can’t travel in time any more, and he’s still a little pissed at the Doctor for that, but he can use the Vortex Manipulator for more than just hopping through time. There’s also space and he can make contact with anyone in range. And whatever the good little Earth people are still telling themselves even after aliens crashed into Big Ben, the truth is, that space around Earth is busy. Holiday tours send their tourists to gawk at the primitive culture, merchant races come to check if Earth had something worth selling, and adventurers and desperadoes are always looking for good and unlikely hiding spots. Earth hasn’t been the home of only its indigenous people for a very long time. And in a few centuries humanity will return the favour and make the universe its playground.

Jack can’t wait to see it happen, so he knows he’s going back there after he had enough of the Sinarian Whiskey and has gotten some of the self-pity out of his system. He can’t blame his team for being efficient and he can’t blame the Doctor for not taking him along when he actually decided to stay behind this time. One day he’ll see the Doctor again and it will be on better terms and without so many regrets — and then he’ll travel in the Tardis again for as long as the Doctor will have him. It’s not like he doesn’t have the time to be patient.

He catches a glimpse of a man in a light beige cricket jacket and looks up. The blonde hair, the cricket outfit, the hat, the ridiculous celery — it’s all unmistakable. He’s seen his picture in the U.N.I.T.'s files a thousand times over while he’d been waiting for the right regeneration of the Doctor to appear. The man skirts along the bar as if he is looking for someone or for a backdoor — or anything really.

Jack turns on the barstool to watch him approach. He looks so much younger in person, younger even than on the pictures. He _is_ younger, of course, than the two Doctors he’s travelled with. 

When the man notices his interest he stops mid motion and stares right back at Jack with a raised eyebrow.

It’s cute. Jack grins and says: “Hello there.”

“Hello,” the Doctor says with now narrowed eyes.

Belatedly, Jack realizes that while this Doctor has no idea who he is and has never met him before, he must recognize what Jack is and that means — because his timeline allows for it, he can alert the Time Lords and take care of this impossibility. How does that work even? He understands time and space and the non-linear mess that are timelines, but he’s not a Time Lord. He can’t _see_ these things and he can only surmise what kind of paradox is sliding into place, because he has just met the wrong Doctor.

It's thrilling and scary. “Hi,” he says again, now with a much dryer throat than before. Damn, he thought he needed a drink before, but now he really needs one. 

The Doctor scrutinises him and Jack braces himself for the unpleasantness that will come out of that delightfully pouting mouth next. After all he’s heard it all before and it’s been very recent that the stupid oaf has admitted that he’s a prejudiced old man who runs from his own shadow if he gets the chance. Only the tiniest part of Jack thinks: “He still has Gallifrey. He could fix you —” and feels relief.

But then the Doctor frowns harder, looks away and across the room of people as if he’s not really seeing them, then he looks back at Jack with a thoughtful expression. “Remarkable,” he says.

Which seems a surprisingly far way off from “wrong” and Jack knows he’s staring, and sure he can’t be talking about Jack, he looks around to see what the Doctor means. Only then does he become aware of the fact that the noise in the room has died down somewhat and when he looks around people are phasing in and out like they are holograms. It’s scary. But the Doctor is intrigued. Jack knows two of his regenerations quite… intimately now. This Doctor may be completely different, but he’s still the same man at the core. He’s interested, curious. He’s not looking all grim and serious. So it’s not a Dalek, end of the world and universe paradox kind of situation. 

That’s a relief. He just survived a rough year that hasn’t technically happened. Last week. He’s not a slacker, but he’d rather have a breather in between universe shattering catastrophes once in awhile. 

“Look at you,” the blonde Doctor says, “all here and there. It’s like you’re… anchored.”

The words “I’m a fact” are on the tip of his tongue before he thinks the Doctor will learn about that soon enough and he hasn’t been called “wrong” yet, so he’s not going to point him in that direction. He grins: “I’m quite versatile.” 

The answering expression is neutral, just like the attempt at flirting goes right over his head.

A girl with curly brown hair enters and looks around as if she is looking for someone. Jack realizes she isn’t really there and for just some weird reason he can see her there, like he’s looking through a veil. 

“She with you?” he asks.

“That’s Nyssa,” the Doctor explains calmly, giving up the information quite readily. “You can see her?”

“Doctor? Where are you?”

Another young woman appears and says: “He just went in there. Where did he go?”

None of the people in the bar pay them any attention and Jack just waits for them to pass through one of the quests like ghosts, but nothing happens. “Phasing?” he suddenly asks.

“Yes and no.” The Doctor is still eerily calm. “Time pocket. Shard of time. Stepped right in. Someone must have wanted me out of the way.” He is studying Jack before he sits in the empty chair beside him. “I thought you might be the spider waiting in the middle of the net, but you seem to have phased into the shard as if you are just… everywhere.” 

“Not everywhere.” Jack tips his glass in his direction. “But for you? Any time.” He smiles lewdly, because this mild mannered Doctor is not what he’s used to. There is no telling how much younger he is really, but Jack wants to see how well he’ll react to innuendo. He can’t pass up the chance to accuse _his_ Doctor of being a grumpy old man.

The Doctor right in front of him just cocks his head to the side and frowns adorably. Not more susceptible to flirting, then. He needs to take notes. 

Jack smiles serenely. “So you’re not really here? Just an echo?”

“I am but I’m not and neither are you. Just a shard of time that shouldn’t even have touched you. Why _has_ it touched you? It’s like something is attracting time to you. You're like a magnet. A void pulling it to you.”

“Just my winning personality,” he says and the “Doctor” nearly slips out at the end of the sentence, but he catches himself with a grin.

“I’m sure.” The girls have vanished again, but it seems the Doctor can still hear them. He is staring at the place where they appeared a moment before as if he is listening. “I’m sorry to cut this delightful conversation short,” he declares, “I need to get out of here. Things are going to turn ugly here.”

“I just wanted to enjoy a lonely drink here. Don’t let me keep you.”

“You need to get out of here too.” 

The bar is still there, but shimmering out of existence, and so is his drink. The Doctor is fast becoming the only thing he can see.

“Interesting,” the man says as he watches it happen too. “Clearly you are not just an ordinary young chap.”

“Ordinary isn’t something I’m called very often, no.” Jack grins. When this is all over he really needs to go and find the Doctor again — the one who will appreciate this joke.

After a moment of watching him, or something around him, the Doctor finally says: “I think I know what’s going on here and how we’ll get out. Touch me.”

“What?” Surely he must have misheard that. 

“Touch me. Time is swirling around you in a never ending pattern, but _you_ — it’s like things are just fixed with you. I’m not sure what caused it, but it must have to do with this time shard. Touch me. My timeline is a mess already. Should be too much for the construct to hold us in.”

“What will happen?” Jack has no idea what the Doctor thinks is going on with him here, but he must be thinking that whatever he can see in Jack is an effect of the trouble he is in at that point of his timeline.

“I think it will just push us apart and splinter our little bubble. Nothing too serious.”

He is so used to trusting the Doctor — he went to his death for him once after all — that he just shrugs in agreement. “Worth a try. But please remember that this was your idea.” He gets to his feet in one fluid motion, grasping the Doctor’s face in both his hands and plants a kiss on his lips, just like he did when he said goodbye to him on the game station.

When he pulls away the Doctor is flushed and staring at him in surprise, like he just had a glance of what Jack truly is. Then everything around them starts to move and shimmer, the shard of time falling away and letting them slip back into their respective time lines. “Goodbye, Doctor,” he says. “Don’t get killed before any of this even happens.” He gives a salute and grins.

The last thing he sees of him is the Doctor’s confused frown and then the bar shimmered back into existence around him. “Looked like you were far away there for a moment,” the yellow-skinned barkeep remarks. 

“I was right here all the time,” Jack disagrees without the grin ever slipping off his face. “But it’s probably time to go home.”

* * *

When he gets back to Torchwood the team has actually missed him. He’s in a much better mood. He still sends a message via psychic paper. “I hope you come visit. I could use a holiday once in a while.”

He’s not sad when there’s no response.

A week later the Tardis appears while he’s enjoying an early quiet morning on the Plass and the Doctor saunters out, not even pretending he needs to look for Jack, just turning and walking towards him. 

“Vacation then?”

“You can drop me back here like nothing has happened, right?”

“Of course, of course.”

Jack doesn’t ask why the Doctor is travelling alone. The Doctor doesn’t ask him why he has changed his mind about travelling with him.

The most important things have always remained unsaid between them.

It doesn’t really matter. “I think I’ll buy you that drink now,” Jack tells him before they are even inside the Tardis.

“Oh?” the Doctor throws back at him over his shoulder. “I feel we are well past that point now. But that’s my fault. I asked for it. So don’t forget you asked for this.” He gestures at the Tardis.

He doesn’t need reminding. He asked and the Doctor came. Perhaps it’s always been that simple.


End file.
